Television is ideally suited as a cockpit display device in air navigation and as a real time communication link in a topographic data bank. Resolution and geometric fidelity are the two critical factors that must be considered in the design of a TV system for displaying topographic information. Experimental studies showed that a display scale of 8 TV-lines per mm on the map sample would be needed to distinguish the fine details in the TV display. Although the geometric distortions in a conventional TV system may amount to 7.4 TV-lines at one sigma level, an accurate distortion map of the display can be obtained by a photogrammetric calibration procedure.